“I never think that anything I’m writing is bluntly political in any way. I’m not going for commentary.”

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for!

Growing food was the first activity that gave us enough prosperity to stay in one place, form complex social groups, tell our stories, and build our cities.

organization is the religion of the single parent.

The way I see it, a person isn’t nothing more than a scarecrow… The only difference between one that stands up good and one that blows over is what kind of a stick they’re stuck up there on.

A flower is a plant’s way of making love.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

You don’t think you’ll live past it and you don’t really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that’s still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.

I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January.

Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.

I rarely think of poetry as something I make happen; it is more accurate to say that it happens to me. Like a summer storm, a house afire, or the coincidence of both on the same day.

I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it “intently political.” I’m just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.

People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.

Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how the world is used.

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

Whatever your years, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.

When I say ‘hip-hop is dead,’ basically, America is dead. There is no political voice. Music is dead.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

There is no such thing as a politically correct war.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends correspondingly to increase. And the dictator will do well to encourage that freedom…it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

American nation was not founded on political principles. This nation was founded on spiritual principles.